


Something better

by Tyellas



Series: Lab T-4 [3]
Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Movie(s), Queer History, Tallulah Bankhead reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 06:14:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12953100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: August, 1962. Elisa and Giles: the hard side of queer life: and a thought for something better.





	Something better

Elisa walked into her apartment after work. Her calendar caught her eye. _August 6, 1962._ Giles had his television awfully loud. She peeked back out. His door was propped open, an invitation for her to come in.

Morning sun flooded Giles' studio. He was sitting there in shirtsleeves and Bermuda shorts, an electric fan’s whir vying with the TV news. Some advertising artwork languished on his drawing board, untouched since last night. A half-empty bottle of sherry was in front of him. Giles’ cats came and wove around Elisa’s ankles, a sign he hadn’t fed them.

When Elisa saw the sherry, she put her hands on her hips for an instant, then lifted them, ready to rant. Giles looked up, blearily, and said, “Did you see the papers?”

Elisa shook her head.

“Marilyn Monroe died yesterday. It’s on all three channels.”

Elisa sat down on the divan with a thump. The news report was droning on. Oh, it sounded awful. Forty pills. The telephone in her hand. All alone.

Giles said, “Another one of my favorites, gone. When I first saw her I thought, this tarnished old world still has some glamour. Some beauty. When was it, it was the 40s, those dull years after the war. Even back then, she always had that woozy purity about her. Did I tell you the details about her and Joan Crawford? It was a scandal. It’d be one even now. In 1953, they...” The sherry had hardly touched Giles' movie-announcer voice.

Elisa tried signing at him twice during the ensuing monologue. She was upset, too, for her own reasons. Marilyn had been in an orphanage, like Elisa had. When Elisa had been turned out to make her own way, Marilyn’s face had just started to light up magazine covers. Reading about her had given luster to Elisa’s flights of fancy. She’d felt for Marilyn’s ups and downs. It would have taken ages to sign to Giles about all this. Not that he was paying any attention. She folded her hands in her lap, mute and very, very tired. She'd given up on wishing she could talk long ago, it was so impossible. With Giles, she forgot about that...most of the time. 

Giles was still going. “It wasn’t her time. Unless it was that she was too beautiful.” Elisa nodded, unseen. “Thus, with a kiss, she dies. No, she didn’t even have that.”

Elisa elbowed Giles. With his attention at last, she signed, _I’d kiss her._

Giles started. “I thought you were in the Rock Hudson fan club with me. Don’t you go queer, too.”

Elisa cut her eyes at him. _Why not?_ It hardly mattered who she wanted to kiss. She’d learned how men saw her, and how women didn’t see her.

Giles downed a small glass of sherry (he’d protest the sherry wasn’t real drinking, practically a tonic: that small glasses didn’t count). “I could never hide it. It kept me on the outside. When you’re a queer, you’re ... the first target.”

This sounded, to Elisa, very like her life already, as a scarred mute. But Giles was maundering on. “If you do, if you can’t help it, stay out of the bars. You know why, child. Even if you stayed out of trouble, you'd wind up with an old soak or become an old soak. Like me. Have them saying the drinking’s the problem. While the ad men’s CEO sinks four bourbons a day and gropes his poor secretary, telling me I’m the one who’s ‘not a family man.’”

Elisa and the two cats all tilted their heads. One of the cats head-bonked his knee.

Giles rambled, “Tallulah Bankhead – she was before your time – she was glorious – she said, ‘I’ve had a man and I’ve had a woman and there’s got to be something better.’ I can’t imagine what.”

Elisa wondered, too. She went and got them both bowls of cornflakes. When she sat back beside Giles, she edged the sherry away. Giles ignored his cornflakes to lean forwards intently. “Look, clips from Marilyn's last movie. They’ll never finish it. With Cyd Charisse. Who’d you rather kiss, Cyd or Marilyn? Cyd’s alive, so she’s got the advantage.”

Giles remembered to look at her as he asked. He was sweaty, balding, down on his luck, tippling at nine in the morning. And her answer mattered to him, in the gentlest way: as her friend.

To make him smile, Elisa signed, _Something better._


End file.
